Daily Archives: July 9, 2013

“Carefully now, ever so carefully…” Maybe not the words you want to hear if someone’s operating — with actual cutting instruments — in your nether regions. But imagine them being spoken as you sit (or rather lie), fully conscious, in front of a riveted, live audience.

The Royal Institution of Australia in Adelaide is looking for a few, umm, incredibly bold men to undergo vasectomies while being scrutinized by the public. Why? To get people talking about male contraception and population control, says Institute’s program manager Lisa Bailey.

“How vasectomy fits into cultural practices both in Australia and around the world and, to go along with all of this, we will actually be having live vasectomies performed on stage,” Bailey told ABC Australia, adding that while the institute isn’t shopping the live exhibitions as a panacea…

Like this:

In With the Old

For many years, experts associated nostalgia with psychological pain. But over the past decade or so, psychologists have changed their tune. As John Tierney explains in the NYT, research has shown nostalgia can actually be a good thing: It “has been shown to counteract loneliness, boredom and anxiety. It makes people more generous to strangers and more tolerant of outsiders. Couples feel closer and look happier when they’re sharing nostalgic memories. On cold days, or in cold rooms, people use nostalgia to literally feel warmer.” Now I don’t feel so bad about missing the old days when reading an article like this would make me feel more optimistic about the future.

Pulling Over Bin Laden

A leaked report from the Abbottabad Commission paints an ugly picture of Pakistan’s government (and other officials and organizations) during the era they played host to the world’s…

Like this:

Can’t decide which summer jam you want to listen to? No matter — now you can listen to them all in one! DJ Earworm, best known for his annual “United States of Pop” year-end mashups, got started a bit early this year to bring us SummerMash ’13. He combined the hottest pop songs of the moment into one massive — and, let’s be honest, painfully catchy — ultimate summer jam.

Featured prominently are the two Pharrell-produced hits currently reigning supreme just about everywhere: Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Daft Punks’s “Get Lucky.” The folks over at Mashable also identified the following songs thrown into the mix:

Like this:

Updated July 11, 12:55 p.m. EST: This article initially reported Dustin Hoffman’s AFI interview aired in 2012, but in fact originally aired in 1998 and again aired last year in honor of Tootsie’s 30th anniversary.

Tootsie, Sydney Pollack’s 1982 hit movie about an actor who dresses as a woman in order to score more gigs, has long been considered a comedy. But for its leading lady, Dustin Hoffman, the movie was a revelation about female beauty — and how men routinely ignore women they don’t find attractive.

Upworthy recently dug up a 1998 American Film Institute interview with the revered actor, who recounted how the film came to be created. Hoffman says he agreed only to make the movie if he could pass as a woman. After he saw himself onscreen in full makeup, Hoffman realized his female counterpart was less than attractive. In the interview, Hoffman becomes emotional…

Three Cleveland women who escaped in May after about a decade of captivity appeared in a video posted to YouTube thanking people for their help.

Each of the trio — Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight — makes a statement in the video, posted for them by a Cleveland PR firm.

“First and foremost, I want everyone to know how happy I am to be home with my family and my friends,” Berry says. “It’s been unbelievable. I want to thank everyone who has helped me and my family through this entire ordeal. Everyone who has been there to support us — it’s been a blessing to have such an outpouring of love and kindness.”

After also thanking “everyone for your love, support and donations,” Knight strikes a defiant and upbeat tone.

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.Asiana Airlines Flight 214 was 500 feet up and about a half-minute from San Francisco International Airport when its speed dropped below the threshold for a safe landing. It continued slowing until just about 8 seconds before touchdown, when pilots recognized the need for more speed and throttled up.

But it already was too late. By the time the engines started adding speed, the hulking Boeing 777 was barely above San Francisco Bay and the plane clipped the seawall at the end of the runway, slammed down and spun, then caught fire. Incredibly, only two of the 307 people on board died, and most of the survivors suffered few or no injuries.

The head of the National Transportation Safety Board on Monday revealed additional details about the final seconds before Saturday’s crash, but what remained unknown was why the pilots didn’t react sooner.

Charles Alt was in Afghanistan working as a civilian contractor when he got the call about his daughter, 21-year-old Army Spc. Ember Alt. She was stationed in Afghanistan, too, just a couple of hours away from him.

“They took me to the mortuary, and I viewed the body, and I didn’t want to believe what I saw,” he remembers. “They told me she was killed from a rocket attack. … They told me she didn’t suffer at all, which was a big relief.”